Shoutbox

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
quote:

PSU 400w £13


most likely this is a crap PSU... 400W is enough, but the price isn't... Go for a higher price range. Never cut budget on the PSU!

If you buy one and you can choose between a few, get the one that is the heaviest. This indicates in almost all cases a very decent quality.

Look if there are plugs to put the power of your monitor in (very handy; though in that case get a PSU with a bit more wattage).

Also see: http://shoutbox.menthix.net/showthread.php?tid=51...d=551342#pid551342

---

thanks!

think i will go for a 600W

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ptoye
quote:

Mointer to be decided, hoping dual screen ( i will be willing to change Mobo for one with dvi and vgd support if that one does not)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
quote:

That mostly depends on your graphics card, not your motherboard.

Get a decent graphics card which supports dual view (not all do! some only support clone view), and one with two DVI connectors (not one with one VGA and one DVI).

---

Never knew that some only suported clone view

thanks, i will ask the guy at th local pc shop which one in the range to get.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dazzy
quote:

Originally posted by Ptoye
Mointer to be decided, hoping dual screen ( i will be willing to change Mobo for one with dvi and vgd support if that one does not)

---

Seeing as youre not going to be gaming, as you said in your previous post, get a nVidia 7300 GS. I used to have that and it ran dual screens fine.

---

Yeh i think a dedicated grapics card would be a good idea .. thanks

@ dazzy - Thanks for the AMD and intel setups! i think i like them, the two asus drives look very good, but i dont think i shoulhd be spending that much on a PSU....

quote:

---

Originally posted by traxor
You should try and get a smaller monitor and you'll get the package cheaper, or of course get a better graphics card or something. The biggest screen anyone needs is 17", which is 1280x1024. Which is, in my opinion the best resolution for games etc.

---

I agree although i have saved up enough (will save more though ) for dual screens (hopefully 20") so i may aswell use the money, i like the concept of dual screens too so

thanks everyone

A lot of help there, alot of info for me to take into condideration, one i get it build (eventually ) i will post a thread in GCC or T&T about it to let you see what i ended up getting..

thanks again!
P.toye

The money you can spare if you buy some smaller screen can be better used for other critical things like memory and/or cpu. Two 20" screens is seriously over the top if you ask me, especially if you need to cut down on other components.  A screen is almost the least important and critical thing in the whole system. It is also something which you can easly expand later on. If you don't have enough money, cut down on the screens, you can later always buy a bigger one.

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised
The money you can spare if you buy some smaller screen can be better used for other critical things like memory and/or cpu. Two 20" screens is seriously over the top if you ask me, especially if you need to cut down on other components.  A screen is almost the least important and critical thing in the whole system. It is also something which you can easly expand later on. If you don't have enough money, cut down on the screens, you can later always buy a bigger one.

---

I see what you mean..... possibly i could just get one moniter ATM and then put the money in CPU/RAM.Grapics card... good thinking thanks

Maybe you should do some research first.. That hardware is awfully outdated..

Here's a brief (like a sketch) list of what you should try to buy :

A good case, which provides good airflow (incase you want air cooling, if we're talking about water cooling, it's an whole different matter) and similar construction quality..
Examples of good brands are Lian Li and Silverstone

Next, a good power supply.. Power Supplies aren't all about Watts. You should revise how many Amps. they got on the 12V line and how many rails they've got in each line (the more amps. the better, and the fewer rails the better). Good brands when it comes to PSUs are Corsair, OCZ etc..

Now, Motherboard.. Try getting the new DFI Infinity P965-S Dark, it is said to be stable and to have good Overclock abilities..  It features the P965 Intel Chipset, thus it won't support SLI in any way, but you surely don't want that, I guess. If you don't want to risk your way into DFI, go straight to Asus, they've just released a brand of motherboards dedicated to Windows Vista, one of which actually features onboard flash memory (need to confirm this), which boosts the "Vista Experience", through Vista ReadyBoost technology

Then, CPU.. Try to get an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600.. With the come of new Conroes, the E6600 has dropped price (something like 260 Euros; now, a while back it was 340 Euros).. It really is a great processor, not a toaster like P4 and a great overclocker.
However, I recommend you getting an after market cpu heatsink, like Tuniq Tower 120 (which tops all air cooling heatsinks), since the Stock Intel heatsink sucks (as usual).

Then, graphics card.. Tomorrow (April 17th), there will be available the new mid-range DirectX10 video cards (8600 GT & GTS), at really affordable prices.. Buying anything else besides nVidia 8xxx series right now is not a good idea.. Good video card brands are eVGA, XFX and so on..

As far as RAM is concerned, try to get 2 Gb at 400 Mhz (800 Mhz Effective) DDR2, with the lower timings possible.. Good brands are Team Elite, Corsair, Geil etc..

As for Hard Drives, try getting some SATA II (300 Mb/s transfer rate) drives.. You can get some cheap prices right now.. Look for low access time and 16 Mb cache, not 8 Mb.

Oh and the optical drives, buy one which Asus launched 2 months ago (Edir : Asus DRW-1814BLT DVD-RAM LightScribe), DVD-+RW, SATA and features lightscribe.. I don't think there's much need for two optical drives but if you think so, buy 2, they aren't really expensive

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevisedDon't get more than 3GB, more than 3GB is totally useless.

---

No way, especially with Vista. If you're using Vista on a 32 bit machine especially- with 4GB you can almost stop it thrashing and caching it's brains out Well, that said, I don't know what you will be using it for so there's a chance you will use less. Still, it's nice to have all your ram in physical ram rather than on your disk!

quote:

---

Originally posted by Verte
No way, especially with Vista. If you're using Vista on a 32 bit machine especially- with 4GB you can almost stop it thrashing and caching it's brains out Well, that said, I don't know what you will be using it for so there's a chance you will use less. Still, it's nice to have all your ram in physical ram rather than on your disk!

---

yes way...

If you're using a 32bit system, it is absolutely useless to add more than 3GB (well 3,5 something actually) performance wise. The added memory will not add anything in performance, speed, memory usage, etc. It will simply be wasted and not being used. Even if you have 2 processes using each 2GB of memory, Windows will still need to use a pagefile (even in Vista!).

There are hundreds of benchmarks to back this up too
And all this for normal PC usage (thus not talking about server editions of Windows, etc.

By the way, you shouldn't buy a PC just now. Wait for the new few months, Q6600 is coming to replace E6600 (Quad CPU), new motherboards with the P35 Intel Chipset (Supporting DDR3), ATi Dx10 cards (Supposedly) coming out soon, Nvidia 8800 Ultra coming out too..

Just wait a while

quote:

---

Originally posted by CookieRevised

quote:

---

Originally posted by Verte
No way, especially with Vista. If you're using Vista on a 32 bit machine especially- with 4GB you can almost stop it thrashing and caching it's brains out Well, that said, I don't know what you will be using it for so there's a chance you will use less. Still, it's nice to have all your ram in physical ram rather than on your disk!

---

yes way...

If you're using a 32bit system, it is absolutely useless to add more than 3GB (well 3,5 something actually) performance wise. The added memory will not add anything in performance, speed, memory usage, etc. It will simply be wasted and not being used. Even if you have 2 processes using each 2GB of memory, Windows will still need to use a pagefile (even in Vista!).

There are hundreds of benchmarks to back this up too
And all this for normal PC usage (thus not talking about server editions of Windows, etc.

---

Then you can turn all pagefiles off

I know, it's still kind of overkill. I've just had too many experiences [mostly mathematical models and simulations, your mileage may vary elsewhere] with Windows paging with nearly a gig of free ram, sucking my performance down. Moving from a recent Windows machine to a six year old laptop running Unix cuts the simulation time by a factor of about five. I haven't had the time to check Windows with paging turned off, I only heard it could be done without deep magic in #Python the other day, but I imagine the speedup could be similar in programs that access a lot of ram at a time.

BTW Cookie, you sure these benchmarks are for 32 bit?